USB good quality sockets on cables

I suspect that USB connections - certainly micro-USB - have exceeded their design life specs. Easy to hide if you have a new phone every 6-12 months. Much harder when you try to carry on using a 2-4 year old one.

All my computing equipment has USB hubs plugged in permanently, and I plug the peripheral into *that*.

Yes but being the hater of wireless keyboards, this is a wired one that can anddoes go across the room. The point of intermittency is the standard usb connector. It seems to me that this is poorly due to the fact that most cables only have a metal outer and nothing to protect it at all so muck and dust gets in and the physical connection is only held together by four little sprung bits of the outer sheath. its total rubbish.

If they designed these like inline connectors should be they would have a much longer shroud and hence less wobble factor after insertion.

Brian